


Cigarettes

by Rose Argent (roseargent)



Category: Tokyo Babylon
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-09-30 10:41:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10161350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseargent/pseuds/Rose%20Argent
Summary: Truth be told, he still hated the taste of cigarettes.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for a pan-fandom RP community on livejournal sometime in 2007.

Truth be told, he still hated the taste of cigarettes. Even though he knew it was impossible, he always half-thought that he could feel the ashes on his tongue. Cigarettes tasted the same as that moment when everything went wrong--bitter, acrid, like the breeze off a funeral pyre. Smoking them was like reliving the feeling of his life crumbling and drifting away on the wind. Maybe that was why he did it--to remind himself of how much he owed Seishirou, how much pain and death he still needed to avenge. Or maybe he just liked the brief illusion of calm that the nicotine gave him.

Either way, thinking about why he smoked when he couldn't stand the taste of the things kept him from thinking too much about other topics. Oh, they reminded him of Seishirou and of how much he had lost, yes. But the time he spent smoking was time he didn't have to spend thinking about his own failures. About the fact that, here he was, more than a year after Hokuto's death, and he still hadn't found Seishirou again. He still hadn't paid Seishirou back for her death. He still hadn't laid her ghost to rest. 

Not that he had even once seen her actual spirit. He would have thought that, by now, he would have caught at least a brief glimpse of her, somewhere. Maybe she was too happy, up there, maybe she was at peace, even though he wasn't. He liked to think that was the reason. But the other possibility haunted him in a way that she herself never would--he feared that the reality was that she just couldn't bear to look at him, that she was so ashamed of him, for his weakness, for letting her die in his place, that she was avoiding him. After all, he could hardly bear to look in the mirror anymore, so surely Hokuto was just as disgusted with him as he was with himself. Or maybe she just didn't recognise him anymore, so little did he resemble the boy she'd known.

It was something of a relief when the main house sent him jobs, now. He'd always faced his duties with a kind of resigned unhappiness, before, but now they were a welcome change from his unending, fruitless search and his own dark thoughts. And it still felt good, to help people. To see spirits moving on and content, to see people come to terms with their own pain and find hope again. It was nice, to give people those things he couldn't grant himself: closure, peace, a second chance. Forgiveness. 

And there was always that faint hope that someday, somewhere, one of those jobs would bring him into conflict with his family's ancient enemy and his own personal demon, the Sakurazukamori. Sakurazuka Seishirou. Sei-chan. 

Even Subaru didn't know what would really happen, when they finally met again. One of them would die, certainly, but when he thought about that meeting, about seeing Seishirou face-to-face again, there were stirrings of other things deep inside his mind, things that he didn't dare examine too closely. Things that had to stay safely buried in the darkest recesses of his heart, along with the happy memories of that year, the joyful moments that should have been irreparably tainted by what came later and yet... weren't. Sometimes he caught himself dreaming about fast food breakfasts with the two of them, all smiles and laughter, embarrassing him terribly and yet making him feel so loved and wanted and cherished... it scared him, when he had those dreams. More than the dreams of Hokuto's death, more than the dreams of that cherry tree and the blood dripping from its blooms, the happy dreams scared him to the depths of his soul. He could not allow himself to be weak a second time. To fail a second time.

A long column of ash toppled from the end of his cigarette, burning his skin where it fell, snapping him out of his reverie. Watching the blue-gray smoke from the neglected cigarette curl away from him in the air, Subaru shook his head and inhaled a few last mouthfuls before dropping the butt and grinding it out beneath his heel. 

With nothing left to distract him from himself, Subaru pushed away from the tree he had been leaning on and resumed his solitary walk across the city, savouring the bitter taste of ashes on his tongue.

-fin-


End file.
